The influence of different weighting factors on linear-array photoacoustic tomography

Abstract

Weighting factors are usually used to improve the imaging quality for photoacoustic tomography (PAT), different weighting factors have different influences on imaging quality. In this paper, five different weighting factors are used to improve the imaging quality for linear-array PAT, including coherence factor (CF), generalized coherence factor (GCF), sign coherence factor (SCF), spatial smoothed coherence factor (SSCF), and spatio-temporally smoothed coherence factor (STSCF). The simulation results show that SCF has the best contrast, later resolution, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for linear-array PAT than CF, GCF, SSCF, and STSCF. SCF is the most appropriately used to improve imaging quality as the weighting factor for linear-array PAT among these weighting factors.